in dulci jubilo
by thelastcountess
Summary: For the Mistletoe Challenge: "It's Christmas Eve, darling," she sighed, giving him her sweetest smile.  "Can't you humour me just a little, tiny, miniscule bit?" Prequel to "so far away that I can't find you."  S/B, rated M, spoilers through Series 2


He watched through the window as the snow softly blanketed the expansive lawns of the Abbey. Blurred together with the falling flakes was the reflection of his wife discarding her gown and stays, revealing pink smooth skin. He watched in the window as she reached for her nightgown, shimmying it over her head, and then for her dressing gown, and then, most peculiarly, her coat.

"If anyone sees you all bundled up that way, they're going to think that I don't provide you with warm clothes," he joked weakly, turning toward her, smirking at the gentle roll of her eyes in response.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Stop dawdling. Grab your coat and your shoes, I told you." She was pulling on a pair of wellingtons, looking all the world like she was preparing to escape from a fire in the middle of the night.

He shrugged off his jacket and reached for the heavy coat that Sybil had somehow conjured up to their room from wherever it was that they stashed those sorts of things for guests. _Guests_. Lord, this visit was strange. "I wish you'd just explain what in the world you're up to," he said, stepping into his own boots.

"It's Christmas Eve, darling," she sighed, giving him her sweetest smile. "Can't you humour me just a little, tiny, miniscule bit?"

And that was how they came to traipse through the snow, shivering and whispering, outside the main house on Christmas Eve. She was carrying a lantern, he the heavy basket she'd thrust into his hands as they slipped out the back door. He wrapped one arm about her shoulders, pulling her close to him as they navigated the slippery ground. It took him a moment to realise how familiar the path they were treading really was. "Are we going where I think we're going?"

"Maybe. Depends on where you think we're going." She held the light out before them, pleasure playing about the corners of her mouth.

"Won't Mr Cole be put out that we're intruding on him?"

As they stopped before the garage door, Sybil produced a key from the depths of her coat pocket and unlocked the door. "Apparently Mr Cole was delighted to be given two days' holiday to visit his mother in Leeds. It certainly is helpful that both you and Edith know how to drive, just in case."

"What have you got up your sleeve, milady?" he asked as they shuffled inside, closing the door quickly against the cold.

She put down the lantern and took the basket from him, setting it aside before grabbing his hands in hers. Her eyes were positively twinkling as she pulled him over toward the Renault, his old familiar friend. "Merry Christmas, love."

It was as if an electric light had illuminated all of the corners of his mind – and he grinned.

* * *

><p>He'd confessed to the old fantasy in the wee hours of the morning a few months before, when his pleasantly naked wife was pleasantly pressed against him in their big bed in Dublin.<p>

"You never thought about making love with me like this before I accepted you?" she'd asked, raising one delicate eyebrow. Her fingers traced circles on his bare chest. "Really?"

"What, you thought all about it while you made me wait for all those years?" He'd grunted a little as he shifted against the pillows. "Who knew you were so worldly – and so masochistic?"

"Stop it," she'd replied, rubbing her nose against his collar bone. "To fantasize about it, I'd have to have known what in the world it was all about. And you were my teacher in this area among others, if you remember correctly."

He'd remembered, of course, and he hadn't been able to stop the smug little smile that appeared on his face. "That's true."

"Really, though. You knew what was going to happen – in our bed, you know – if I agreed to go with you. Were you imagining it even then?"

"I don't know how I'm supposed to answer that question."

"Honestly. That's the way you're supposed to answer all of my questions."

He'd sighed, letting long strands of her hair slip through his spread fingers. "The thing is, you were so young when I first came to Downton – you were a cute lass, but you were all of what, fifteen? That would have been just a bit inappropriate, don't you think?"

"I think I was sixteen," she'd corrected. "And in any case, I wasn't talking about all the way back then. I was talking about after you proposed to me. When we used to talk together, before the war was over."

"When you said no to me I tried not to think about you at all for a good long while," he'd murmured, frowning a little at the sadness that passed across her face. "I'm sorry, love, but that's the truth."

She'd sat up a little, letting the blankets fall away from her body. "I thought I'd made it fairly clear when I could, though, that I knew that I was in love with you. I didn't dare say it, because what if someone discovered us and sent you away? I wasn't brave enough yet. But then – didn't you know then?"

"I might have suspected."

"And didn't you think about it, then? What it would be like to make love with me?"

"You really want me to make myself sound like a lech, don't you?"

She'd blushed a little. "No … it just … there's something appealing about having the man you love want you that way. Wouldn't you like to hear about it if I'd dreamed about your mouth and your hands and your … wouldn't you?"

Once more he'd sighed, rolling over so that he hovered over her body. He bent his head to nip at the soft skin of her neck. "Okay, fine. You win. I wanted you. Every time I saw you, every time I smelled your perfume, every time I heard someone else say your name, for Christ's sake. I imagined what your skin would taste like, how it would feel." He'd sucked in a breath. "You were in my bed in the cottage – in my imagination anyway, you were – and you would tell me that you loved me, and then you'd pull your dress over your head and put my hands on your breasts."

She was wide-eyed. "Go on."

He'd laughed a little, kissing her hard. "I dreamed that you wanted me too, and you'd tug at my clothes and touch me all over." Sybil had been the one to initiate the next kiss, tongues tangling until they were both so breathless that they had to part. He put his mouth to her ear. "You'd pull up your skirts and open your legs, and I'd push inside you, and you'd cry out for me. Oh, sweetheart."

She'd moaned a little as their bodies tangled together. "Did you – oh, yes, Tom – did you only think about the two of us in the cottage? It's so strange that I never saw inside your cottage. Ah, don't stop!"

"You know where I wanted you." His voice had grown hushed.

She'd pulled back a little so that she could see his face. "Tell me, please." She kissed him hard. "Please, please, I want to hear you say it."

He'd been unable to stifle the groan that escaped. "Sometimes – sometimes I imagined that I'd take you out for a drive somewhere, and you'd tell me to pull the car over on some deserted stretch of road, and you'd beckon me into the backseat with you, and we'd come together so suddenly, so furiously." He'd let his forehead drop to her shoulder, trying desperately to control himself. "Sometimes I thought we wouldn't even make it out of the garage – you'd come visit me at night and we'd be so desperate for each other that we'd make love right there. Christ. Christ, I wanted you for so long that it scared me when I could have you – I thought you'd vanish like you did in my dreams."

She'd curled her whole body about his, and her mouth on his was insistent. His words had struck a chord in her, and their coupling was intense, burning fast and quick and hot.

"Fuck," he'd whispered, dazed, as they lay together in the aftermath, sweat cooling on their bodies.

She'd kissed his cheek softly. "I just – if I'd known at all what this was going to be like, it – you – would have been the only thing I dreamed about, too."

* * *

><p>That night had unlocked something in both of them – and even more than that, they shortly realized that it was on that night that they'd made a baby for the first time. But the initial shock and joy of that discovery had ended abruptly early one morning when Tom woke to a bloody bed and Sybil in a pained panic. They both felt the loss keenly, even though they'd only had a few weeks to entertain the idea of becoming parents.<p>

He had felt utterly useless as his wife grieved for a child who had only just hinted at its future arrival – he'd been crushed by the loss as well, but he knew it was different for Sybil. She'd had friends from the ward at the hospital to help her cope, but the best source of comfort actually had been her mother. He'd forgotten about the baby that Lady Grantham had lost, back in that first summer when he'd started to see Sybil as a woman rather than just as the friendly, intelligent daughter of his employer.

How strange, he'd thought, that such a painful experience would be the catalyst to healing Sybil's relationship with her mother. The Granthams had given their permission for their marriage, and even provided them with the money to purchase their home in the city, but it had been clear that both of them continued to struggle with the idea of their youngest daughter running away with a servant to an unfamiliar city. As the conflict in Ireland grew more intense, he knew those doubts were only reinforced.

But Sybil was able to write to her mother about things in the aftermath of the miscarriage that she couldn't – or wouldn't – speak about readily with him. It wasn't as if she was keeping things from him, but he knew he couldn't really understand everything about how she felt. So she wrote to Lady Grantham, and Lady Grantham replied in kind, and soon enough, Sybil was asking him rather nervously if they could go to Downton for Christmas. She hadn't needed to be nervous. He'd have done nearly anything she asked of him.

The visit had been surreal so far, with the new chauffeur, Mr Cole – a rather unattractive bald man, he noted with a smirk – picking them up from the train station and depositing them at the front door. He was almost certain he'd never walked through the front door of the house before. They were directed to Sybil's room, where he felt he'd entered some sort of forbidden wonderland, and she'd been rather giddy at the thought of sleeping next to him in the bed she'd slept in while she pined for him and for a new life. After a truly awkward family dinner in which Carson had glared at him and Sybil's grandmother had asked him horrifyingly naïve questions about class conflict in Ireland, his wife had put her gloved hand in his, led him up the stairs to her room, and made love to him, soft and sweet, for the first time since that awful morning in early November.

Bless her, Sybil had tried to do everything possible to make him comfortable in his new role as son-in-law rather than servant. When Lady Rosamund and Lady Mary had announced that everyone should accompany the men of the party on a shoot, Sybil had pled that they were both still fatigued from the crossing, then took him to his favourite old bookshop in Ripon to peruse the new offerings. They had borrowed the motor and spent an afternoon driving about the countryside, with Sybil tucked against his side in the front seat this time.

And it wasn't just Sybil – it seemed that things were finally beginning to thaw with some of the rest of the family, too. They'd gone to the cinema with Edith and Matthew to see _The Miracle Man_, and they'd had a pleasant supper at the Grantham Arms afterward in which he finally began to see her sister and cousin as equals rather than awkward superiors. He and Sybil shared a hymn book at the village church, and when he'd looked up, he'd noticed Cora smiling benevolently at the two of them. Matthew gave him some of his old clothes, so that he would look the part more effortlessly at dinner, and Anna and Sybil helped alter them to fit. Robert showed him a new series of books on Irish history that he'd ordered for the library.

He began to think that perhaps things were going to be fine after all.

* * *

><p>From what he could see in the dim light cast about by the lantern, his garage hadn't changed a bit – whitewashed bricks, gleaming brass, bits and bobs stored on windowsills, sawhorses, wherever there was a spare surface. He breathed in deeply and smiled at the scent of gasoline and polish. He didn't miss being a servant, but sometimes he deeply missed being a chauffeur.<p>

"You look like you're in nirvana," Sybil teased as she shrugged off her coat and hung the lantern from a hook on the wall. The Renault's door creaked quietly as she opened it to heft the basket inside.

He smirked. "I spent a lot of time in here, _milady_, I'm just feeling a bit nostalgic."

"Hmm." She fairly sauntered as she walked over to him, pushing his coat off his shoulders and draping it across the bonnet of the car.

"So you brought me in to make sure the cars are all in good working order, I presume?" he asked lightly, touching the tip of a finger to the tip of her nose.

The nose wrinkled as she frowned. "Yes, Mr Branson, that's clearly it. I thought we'd do a full-on reenactment of 1914-1918, complete with me sitting on the running board while you tinker with the engine and talk to me about the Bolsheviks."

"I do not tinker," he replied with a gasp of mock outrage. "I expertly repair."

She backed away from him slowly. "Well, you can feel free to expertly repair all you like." She let the dressing gown fall off her shoulders. "I'm just going to be over here, minding my own business, waiting for the chauffeur to notice me."

He shook his head with a grin. "The chauffeur always noticed you."

"Hm. Is that so?" She stepped closer to him and pressed her palms against his chest, spreading her fingers wide. "I always wondered why. Because the chauffeur was smart, and handsome, and I always thought he must have been hiding a sweetheart somewhere. Why would he want the daughter of an earl when she was young and awkward and emblematic of all the privilege he hated?"

"Because she could casually use words like 'emblematic' in a sentence," he laughed, letting his hands rest at her waist. "And she was smart, and beautiful, and every time a peer or an officer visited the house, he wondered why one of them didn't ask for her hand."

"Sometimes they did," she responded quietly. "But she never said yes."

He pulled her closer. "Why in the world did you wait for me, Sybil?"

She shook her head. "Oh, really. Don't you know by now? You were right. I loved you for so long. I didn't know how to say it for a long time, not even when we decided to run away. But I did. So much, darling."

Her words overwhelmed him; all he could do was kiss her and hope that everything he felt could be expressed through that gesture. Her arms came around his neck, and the kiss deepened, intensified, until he pulled back panting, resting his forehead against hers.

"I know I've been distant," she whispered, words coming fast as if she were afraid to stop, lest they'd escape her completely. "Mama told me that it was wrong of me to shut you out, that you suffered a loss, too. But I didn't know what to say. I'm so sorry. I just didn't know what to say."

He kissed her cheek, stroked her hair. "Please don't worry." He pressed his lips to her temples, her jaw, her mouth. "I knew you were confused. I was confused, too. Neither of us – you didn't do anything wrong."

She smiled at him a bit tearfully. "You see? That's why I love you, Tom." She kissed him again until both of them were breathless. Giving him a playful smile, she whispered, "Do you want your Christmas present?"

His own smile widened as she reached for the hem of her nightgown and swiftly pulled it over her head before daintily climbing into the backseat of the car, naked as the day she was born. "You will be the death of me, Sybil Crawley."

"Sybil _Branson_," she corrected, shivering a little as she pulled a blanket out of the basket and spread it over the cold leather seat. "Are you just going to stand there? It's freezing in here like this! Come warm me up."

He shook his head and kicked off his boots before climbing in after her, gathering her up in his arms as he leaned back against the seat. She smiled, trembling a bit as he traced careful fingertips across the muscles of her back.

"Is this what you dreamed about?" she whispered, kissing him gently, taking his hands in hers and pressing his open palms against her breasts. "The two of us together like this, here?"

His murmuring heart was so full he was afraid it might burst. "Those old dreams pale in comparison to the reality," he replied, pulling her body more firmly against his. "My favourite girl in my favourite car. Mmm." His hands slid down to her bum, drawing her even closer, and his mouth found his favourite spot, the soft flesh where her neck met her shoulder. He sucked hard, not caring that he knew she'd have to hide a mark the next morning, and she moaned, wriggling against him.

"I love you," she said, low and urgent, as she helped him remove his clothes. She winced when, in her haste, one of the buttons popped off his shirt. "Oops."

"Eh, doesn't matter. Come here," he replied, relishing the feel of her against him. They rocked and swayed together, mouths dancing in a familiar rhythm, fingers exploring flesh that was both familiar and somehow still mysterious. Soon their warm breath had fogged up the windows so much that it felt like they were wrapped in their own cocoon.

She rose over him and eased back down, making both of them groan out loud. "No one else stays out here but the chauffeur," he said breathlessly. "No one will hear us."

"Good," she moaned, clutching at his hair as she writhed in his lap. "Oh…"

"Yes," he rasped. "I want to hear you."

As they moved, their cries reached a fever pitch, until she was jerking desperately against him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she searched for release. He brushed her sweaty curls out of her face and kissed her passionately, feeling rather than hearing the cries muffled against his lips. When he slipped one hand between them to touch her, she keened, reaching out a hand out blindly to steady herself. He could hear her palm squeaking against the glass. "Yes, love, yes," he encouraged her. "Just like that, darling."

The feeling of her body clenching and trembling all around him sent him over the edge with a hoarse shout, his mouth against her hair, his eyes focusing and unfocusing in the muted, diffused light.

They held each other for a long while, lips and hands languid. When she pulled back a bit, far enough to see his face more clearly, he smiled slowly, tracing her mouth, her collarbone, her cheeks. "Is that how you imagined it?" she murmured, curving her palms over his shoulders.

"Better than I could have imagined." He drew one finger down between her breasts to her navel, and she shivered. "You are just – I still cannot believe I actually got to marry you, that I actually get to touch you like this." He traced the curve of her breast with one finger, bent his neck so that he could draw one pink peak between his lips.

He remembered every touch they'd ever exchanged in this garage, every glance they'd ever shared. The day he'd reached out a hand and pressed it against her hip to stop her from leaving was like a searing muscle memory. And now she was naked with him. Jesus Christ.

She shivered a little, and he reached for his discarded shirt, but she stopped him with a wicked grin. "This part of the present is really more for me." She reached in to the basket and retrieved one of the green jackets from his old livery, draping it over her shoulders. "I'm smuggling it back to Ireland with us. Don't tell."

He laughed out loud. Sybil giggled a bit, too, as she moved to sit beside him on the bench seat and fished a bottle of champagne from the basket. "Good lord, you little thief," he said, cuddling her close to his side as she fiddled with the cork. When it burst open with a loud crack, she shrieked, and the two of them dissolved into a fit of laughter before drinking the bubbling liquid straight from the bottle.

"I think this is the best Christmas I've ever had," she said decidedly as she took another long pull from the bottle and then passed it back to him.

"I know it's the best one I've ever had," he replied, smacking a kiss against her cheek.

* * *

><p>Soon enough, they were back in Dublin, which was grey and drab rather than snowy, but lovely in its own strange way. And change was in the air once more – they'd gone to Yorkshire two and come back three, and this time, it was for keeps.<p>

"I was thinking," Sybil said with a wicked glint in her eye, reaching out to smooth down Moira's wild, downy hair. "It must have been the night in the car at Christmas, don't you think?"

Tom snorted as he looked down at the squirming bundle in his arms and back up at his wife. "Seems only fitting, doesn't it, milady?"

"Yes," she replied dreamily, exhausted but exuberant. "Yes, Branson, I think it does."

_finis_


End file.
